Related papers: A solution to the 7-prince's tour problem

By a tight tour in a $k$-uniform hypergraph $H$ we mean any sequence of its vertices $(w_0,w_1,\ldots,w_{s-1})$ such that for all $i=0,\ldots,s-1$ the set $e_i=\{w_i,w_{i+1}\ldots,w_{i+k-1}\}$ is an edge of $H$ (where operations on indices…

We solve a problem of Littlewood: there exist seven infinite circular cylinders of unit radius which mutually touch each other. In fact, we exhibit two such sets of cylinders. Our approach is algebraic and uses symbolic and numerical…

Parts I-IV showed that the number of ways to place $q$ nonattacking queens or similar chess pieces on an $n\times n$ chessboard is a quasipolynomial function of $n$ whose coefficients are essentially polynomials in $q$. For partial queens,…

Circular nim $CN(m, k)$ is a variant of nim, in which there are $m$ piles of tokens arranged in a circle and each player, in their turn, chooses at most $k$ consecutive piles in the circle and removes an arbitrary number of tokens from each…

We consider the unconstrained traveling tournament problem, a sports timetabling problem that minimizes traveling of teams. Since its introduction about 20 years ago, most research was devoted to modeling and reformulation approaches. In…

In this paper we investigate the existence of closed billiard trajectories in not necessarily smooth convex bodies. In particular, we show that if a body $K\subset \mathbb{R}^d$ has the property that the tangent cone of every non-smooth…

Much progress has been made on the problem of calculating $g(n)$ for various classes of integers $n$, where $g$ is the group-counting function. We approach the inverse problem of solving the equations $g(n) = 6$ and $g(n) = 7$ in $n$. The…

We consider the minimal number of points on a regular grid on the plane that generates $n$ line segments of points of exactly length $k$. We illustrate how this is related to the $n$-queens problem on the toroidal chessboard and show that…

Suppose we have $n$ dice, each with $s$ faces (assume $s\geq n$). On the first turn, roll all of them, and remove from play those that rolled an $n$. Roll all of the remaining dice. In general, if at a certain turn you are left with $k$…

It has been a challenge to make seven straight round cylinders mutually touch before our now 10-year old discovery [Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 015505 (2004)] of configurations of seven mutually touching infinitely long round cylinders (then…

We prove PSPACE-completeness of two classic types of Chess problems when generalized to n-by-n boards. A "retrograde" problem asks whether it is possible for a position to be reached from a natural starting position, i.e., whether the…

Normally a chess problem must have a unique solution, and is deemed unsound even if there are alternatives that differ only in the order in which the same moves are played. In an enumerative chess problem, the set of moves in the solution…

We solve an infinite family of twisted polynomial problems that are cubic generalizations of Hubbard's twisted rabbit problem. We show how the result of twisting by a power of a certain Dehn twist depends on the 9-adic expansion of the…

We consider a logical puzzle which we call double pouring problem, which was original defined for $k=3$ vessels. We generalize this definition to $k \ge 2 $ as follows. Each of the $k$ vessels contains an integer amount of water, called its…

The classical Erdos-Szekeres theorem states that a convex $k$-gon exists in every sufficiently large point set. This problem has been well studied and finding tight asymptotic bounds is considered a challenging open problem. Several…

In this work we are interested in the central configurations of the spatial seven-body problem where six of them are at vertices of two congruents equilateral triangles belong to parallel planes and one triangle is a rotation by the angle…

A quasiperiodic 7-fold rhombic tiling is constructed with an iterative substitution scheme. The inflation factor is 5.04892..., the square of the longer diagonal of a regular heptagon. There are many substitutions possible that fill larger…

Given a domain or, more generally, a Riemannian manifold with boundary, a billiard is the motion of a particle when the field of force is absent. Trajectories of such a motion are geodesics inside the domain; and the particle reflects from…

We analyze the computational complexity of Tetris clearing (determining whether the player can clear an initial board using a given sequence of pieces) and survival (determining whether the player can avoid losing before placing all the…

The function that counts the number of ways to place nonattacking identical chess or fairy chess pieces in a rectangular strip of fixed height and variable width, as a function of the width, is a piecewise polynomial which is eventually a…